Does anyone have any information about how loud gunshots are at different ranges?

At point-blank, it sounds like a common rifle caliber could generate about 150 dB. But what about at 100 yards? 200 yards?? How much does the SPL reduce over distance?

aaron.foulk

July 24th, 2013 05:32 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by squirrels
(Post 2583214)

Does anyone have any information about how loud gunshots are at different ranges?

At point-blank, it sounds like a common rifle caliber could generate about 150 dB. But what about at 100 yards? 200 yards?? How much does the SPL reduce over distance?

Far too complicated a question to answer directly accurately. 6 dB drop with a doubling of distance is a fair place to start for an extremely rough answer. 150 at 1m, 144 at 2m , 138 at 4 m and so on if your initial 150 dB estimate is correct. Source directivity can screw you up as will shock waves off the supersonic projectile.

This can be treated fairly well as a free space path loss problem. So as above, the only rule of thumb is going to be as stated above : 6db every time the distance doubles should be fairly accurate given a clear path between you and the firearm. Now simply assigning a fixed dB level to a gun blast is not accurate. Different angles (in 3 dimensions) will have different SPL's based on the aperture of barrel. I don't even want to think of how the bullet would effect the pattern.